New Bus Capacity Confirmed As 80

We can now confirm the maths in the previous post and say that contrary to what Boris and TfL have been saying for years they’ve just spunked £212m on a 600 buses which carry 9% fewer passengers than a regular off the shelf hybrid, which is also 25% cheaper.

We still don’t know the fuel consumption because TfL won’t tell us. The ICO will be contacted later about TfL’s refusal to answer simple FoI requests.

For comparison, here’s the stats for the the original long Routemaster (RML) against the ‘best bus in the world’ (as Boris put it):

RML: 7874kg – 72 seats – 5 standing

NB4L: 12460kg – 62 seats – 18 standing

So the NB4L achieves the magnificent feat of weighing 58% more despite having fewer seats.

No excuse for Boris and TFL not telling the truth. But the wheelchair space will be worth a great deal to those who need it, as the only alternative is a very much more expensive taxi.
Does that wheelchair space subtract from the standing passengers though?

[…] New Bus For London, being massively overweight, can only carry 80 passengers plus one wheelchair (fewer than the double-deckers it replaced on route 24) and also takes up more road space as it is […]